The ghost of Goat Island Light

Thursday

In October, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, it's easy to believe in restless spirits that still walk the Earth and make themselves known to the living.

In October, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, it's easy to believe in restless spirits that still walk the Earth and make themselves known to the living.

Of course, the coast of southern Maine is not without its share of such tales, and many involve lighthouses, the most iconic of all Maine symbols.

But while some of the stories involving Maine's lighthouses are eerie, the one involving Goat Island Light in Cape Porpoise Harbor is a little sad but sweet.

Kennebunkport Historian Barbara Barwise said many people in town have long believed that Goat Island is still home to former keeper Dick Curtis

"He drowned on Memorial Day weekend in 1992," she said.

Barwise said there have been reports of an apparition in the window and the island being shrouded in fog on otherwise clear days.

No one knows those stories better, though, than current lighthouse keeper Scott Dombrowski, who had been friends with Curtis since both were 12.

Dombrowski said he remembers clearly the day Curtis went missing.

"People had asked him to take care of their dogs," he said of Curtis, who had a dog of his own. "He came back to the lighthouse and took the dogs out for a boat ride."

It had been a sunny, warm day, Dombrowski said, and people in the harbor recall seeing Curtis and the dogs heading back out to the island about 15 minutes before the tide would have allowed for a gentle landing.

"I speculate he rode out past the island," Dombrowski said.

There, Curtis would have seen a life jacket floating where a boater had secured it to a dropped anchor. Fearing the worst, his friend said he would have investigated.

"He got over to the area and I think he heard a rogue wave," Dombrowski said. "They found the motor gear at full throttle. I think he tried to bring the boat around."

Instead, Curtis drowned within sight of the island he'd called home for eight years. Two of the dogs with him made it to shore, but two others were never seen again.

Or were they?

Dombrowski said signs of Curtis' presence became known soon after his death.

"Things started to happen," he said.

Giving a tour of the island later that summer, Dombrowski said he overheard one of the women on the tour say to her companion, "This place is haunted."

Later, when Dombrowski asked her what she meant, she told him Curtis was there and had a message for him.

"She said he was all right," he said. "And that he was going to make his presence known."

Later, as the visitor waited at the boat launch, she began chanting strangely.

"She was saying, 'One of the dogs made it,'" Dombrowski said. "She must've said it 50 times."

Throughout that summer and fall, Dombrowski said Curtis made his presence known. A vent fan turned itself on in front of a roomful of guests. Items that had been lost showed up, repeatedly, on the kitchen table.

"Crazy little things like that," Dombrowski said.

It got so that he began talking to his old friend. One chilly afternoon, he even had a request.

"It was cold and I was exhausted, so I sat in Dick's easy chair and said, 'Dickie, give me some heat,'" he said. "We had this electric heater that hadn't worked for years and all of a sudden I heard it go on."

Dombrowski said he would often say hello to Dick as he arrived on the island — and that his old friend would find a way to answer.

"I'd be walking up beach, get to a berm and the fog horn would sound once," he said. "It was perfectly clear and always when I got to the same point."

Dombrowski said he also got a shock after giving a presentation to children at Sea Road School that fall.

"One of the lobstermen chased me across the parking lot," he said. "He knew Dick and told me he'd been up to his hunting camp and a guy there, who said he was a psychic, picked up on Dick's death. He said he broke into a chant. He said, 'One of the dogs made it.'"

While Dombrowski said no one has ever seen or heard of either of the two missing dogs making it to land, it does make him wonder. So do all of the "mechanical problems" the lighthouse experienced since Curtis's death.

They all started back in 2007, when Dombrowski hung both Russian and American flags at the lighthouse for a visit by both President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Bush senior came on his boat and took pictures," he said. "Then he brought his son and President Putin and said, 'See, our people want us to work together.

I came down and said, 'Hey, Dick, what do you think of that?,' and the foghorn sounded."

The foghorn, in fact, sounded more and more often, even on clear days, and people on shore started complaining, Dombrowski said.

"The Coast Guard had a hard time shutting the foghorn off," he said. "They tried new sensors, they replaced the whole unit. They disconnected the power, but it would still go off."

They replaced the unit again and finally after nearly a year, Dombrowski said, the signal started to work normally.

Since that time, he said, Dick's presence hasn't made itself known, and Dombrowski, for one, misses it.

"It was just a very calming, wonderful presence," he said. "I wish he'd still show himself."

Of Maine's lighthouse legends none are as eerie, perhaps, as the tale of Boon Island Light.

Six miles off the coast of York, the lighthouse can be found on a rocky island in the sea. According to William O. Thomson, the Kennebunk author of 26 books including "Stories and Legends Along the Maine Coast," the story begins sometime in the 1840s when a young lighthouse keeper, Luke Bright, brought his new wife, Katherine, to the island to live.

The couple was married only a short time, Thomson said, when December brought a howling nor'easter to the island. Despite the danger to himself, Luke Bright decided he needed to make his way from the house to the light tower to light the light so any ships out in the storm would be guided safely to shore.

"He tied a rope to his waist and went out in the storm," Thomson said. "He was trying to secure the bolt in the tower when he slipped into the ocean and drowned."

His widow, Katherine, dragged Luke's body back to the tower and sat with her dead husband.

"She held his hand," Thomson said. "And she kept the light going for five days, climbing 164 steps each time. Finally, the lantern went out because she had run out of fuel."

Once the people on land realized the light had gone out, a fisherman rowed out to the island to check on the Brights. They found Luke dead and Katherine beside him in the freezing cold tower.

"It was 10 below in the tower," Thomson said. "She died a short time later."

Advertise

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
seacoastonline.com ~ 111 New Hampshire Ave., Portsmouth, NH 03801 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service